A Damsel in Distress ~or~ Bon Mots

 When I was writing my thoughts about A Gentleman of Leisure, I noted that there was a general lack of typical Wodehouseian turn of phrases.  To be honest, when I was in media res with that book, I was not thinking to myself, “This is sorely lacking in witticisms.”  It was more like, “This book is lacking something.  I don’t know quite what it is…”  It should be noted that by the time I get to read on the train in the mornings, I have only had one cup of coffee.  My mind is not at its keenest. 

One of the things that has been made apparent to me during the course of this exercise of reading the entirety of Wodehouse is that not everyone is familiar with his work.  There are those who have seen the televised versions of the stories, and even a smaller circle who have read one or two books.  So, to give you an idea of what I’m yammering on about, I earmarked a couple of examples:

“Reggie’s was a troubled spirit these days.  He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron.  He was practically a soul in torment.”

What is typically wonderful about the preceding quotation is its mixture of the sublime, that is, romantic love, with the mundane, which is golf.*  Then we have this little gem:

“He was, for a young man, extraordinarily obese.  Already a second edition of his chin had been published, and the perfectly-cut morning coat which encased his upper section bulged out in an opulent semi-circle.”

Having a second edition of a chin is something that I wish I had written.  Interestingly enough, the description of this man’s weight has a significant bearing on the book’s plot.  It’s a nice technique to keep the subject of obesity fresh in the reader’s mind. 

So, while there is a lot of zippy dialogue in a Wodehouse text, what I find myself cherishing more are the wry observations that come outside of the spoken word.  I’ve realized that I don’t have many more opportunities to read these lines; by my count, I have only 23 more Wodehouse books in the Overlook imprint to go.  Four of them are non-fiction, so I have no idea what they might be like.  There is the final Jeeves and Wooster book in that lot (I might have two left, I have yet to make a thorough inventory) and, of course, the last Blandings book.  In fact, Wodehouse was working on “Sunset at Blandings,” at the time of his death.  It is unfinished, and I am interested to see the witticisms are fully developed in a text that was not completely polished. 

*I realize that some people equate golf with sublimity, but I am not in that camp.  The fewer things I swing in the air, the safer the world is.  I know enough golfers who feel as though it trumps just about everything, and comes a very close second to love.  Maybe these people have a different reading of this selection. 

A Gentleman of Leisure

I recently read the memoir written by Carey Elwes about his time working on the set of The Princess Bride.  Aside from being a thoroughly charming book, I was reminded of the movie-related books that I read when I was a teenager.  The Princess Bride is a different case, because that was a book long before it was a movie.*  However, there was a time (perhaps this practice still continues, I don’t know) when publishing houses, or maybe it was the movie studios, commissioned books that were adaptations of movies.  When I was obsess by a certain movie, be it Labyrinth, Ladyhawke, Young Sherlock Homes, or any number of the assorted films that took my fancy when I was at a very impressionable age, I would immediately go out and purchase the soundtrack and the tie-in book.  The part I liked best about the books is that they almost always gave a little more history, a little more insight to the characters and the plot.  It was a nice way to replay the movie in my mind, this at a time when it would take months, if not over a year, for the VHS version of a movie to become available on the open market, thereby allowing me to watch it obsessively in the privacy of my own home.

This month’s Wodehouse, A Gentleman of Leisure, seems to have been an early ancestor of the movie tie-in book.  It was first a play that featured Douglas Fairbanks.  I wish I could say that it captured my imagination as much as those earlier books did.  Sadly, it feels as though Wodehouse was more than done with the story and he wanted to move on and write something different, but maybe he was contractually obliged to write the thing.  The text lacks any of the lunatic flourishes that make his work so universally appealing. 

The plot was all right, and involved the usual cast of characters including burglars, diamonds, the gentry, etc., which was about enough to speed me along.  But everything felt as though Wodehouse had been there, done that.  I don’t know much about the play’s history, but if Wodehouse had been involved with the rehearsals, after seeing the thing a million and one time, maybe rewriting substantial chunks when someone absolutely was unable to remember their shining piece of dialogue, maybe he was ready to wash his hands of it.  Certainly, there is a line in the text which implies a certain sense of the ridiculous.  Our heroine is told: “It isn’t the hero of the novel you want to marry, it’s the man who’ll make you a good husband.”  Of course, she goes on to do just that.  Maybe this was Plum breaking the fourth wall, or being silly, or, perhaps it was way of getting back at a world that was making him spend more time on something that, in his mind, was done and dusted. 

*I do have a slightly embarrassing story concerning The Princess Bride though.  For those who are unfamiliar with the book (and, if you are, I highly suggest that you drop everything post haste, procure a copy, and read it, because you will never spend a more delightful afternoon) it is meant to be an abridgement of a history of two fictional countries, purportedly written by one S. Morgenstern.  My friend Christine and I spent the better part of an afternoon in the late 1980’s searching for the original text, only to be told by some publishing maven, who was reduced to peals of laughter by our question, that it was a farce and no such original text existed.  Although I was mortified, I felt better about the entire episode when we received a mass mailing about the progress of the book’s sequel, Buttercup’s Baby.  Apparently, it is the one book that William Goldman has been unable to write.  This thought pleases me in many ways, because I honestly wonder how he could even begin to compare with his splendid work.  After all, I am one of those people whose high standards has led her to deny that Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull does, in fact, exist.  As far as I’m concerned, it was just a mass hallucination, and a horrible one at that. 

The Girl on the Boat*

It did not hit me until I had to remember the title of this book that there is one thing that I have not (and probably never will) experience that most of Wodehouse’s earlier characters have.  Namely this: I have never sailed across the Atlantic.  I’ve only crossed that ocean on a plane.  A good deal of action in the pre-1960’s novels involves sailing.  It has been used as a catalyst, throwing two people together, it has been used as a setting for the action and, in at least one instance, it has been a means of escape. 

While a flight across the ocean can feel as though it is taking forever, they rarely last more than eight hours.  During the portion of my life when I made the trip regularly, and wrestled with horrible jet lag, I envied those who were allowed to reset their internal clocks along a more civilized timeframe.  What I would have given to have arrived at port adjusted and in a good mood, instead of fuzzy and vaguely desperate.  It might have made my choice encounters with customs officials more bearable.  There is also the matter of one‘s fellow travelers.  I often begin my flights by looking around at my seat companions and resigning myself to being sneezed upon, or squished, or being talked at, or annoyed by screaming children, or some nightmarish combination, for the duration.  The feeling that I get from Wodehouse’s description of ocean liner travel is different.  There are many more people among whom one can circulate, although there are class divisions, so one does not have the free run of the vessel.  One also has the ability to hole up in one’s cabin on a boat, whereas on a plane you are all pressed together, sometimes more intimately than you would otherwise wish.

Then there are the diversions, the promenades, the dinners, the games, the sitting comfortably on board deck chairs.  On today’s planes, you’re lucky if you get a bag of pretzels hurled at you by a harassed flight attendant and for headphones that actually transmit the sound of the in-flight entertainment.  To be fair, I would probably be driven a little mad by the necessity to change clothes on a revolving basis.  That being said, my impression is that there were a lot more possibilities for plot developments on a boat, and Plum made use of them.  Although I have seen references to female characters being stewardesses in the later novels, I have not yet encountered action set on a plane itself.  Perhaps I shall make an interesting discovery later on, but it seems to me that there is not much scope for drama on a plane in the Wodehouse universe.  Maybe he did not like planes.  I can certainly say that today’s travel conditions have not made me a fan of them either.

*Read April 2015.  I’m slowly catching up.

The Problem with the Coming of Bill*

It finally happened; I’ve read a Wodehouse book that I really did not care for.  There were a couple of things that attributed to this.  The first that I encountered was the Domineering Aunt’s** taste for eugenics.  To me, it bought up uncomfortable images of the Final Solution and various experiments that were carried out by Hitler’s gang.  In Wodehouse’s defense, the book was written on 1919, when eugenics was a fad and possibly no one had any idea where it might lead.  Still, it was unsettling to see said Domineering Aunt refer to people as good breeding stock and consider that, once a couple had procreated, the male was surplus to requirements.

The other, larger problem was that I did not really like any of the characters until at least halfway through.  Basically the plot revolves around a young woman who drifts in the high society echelons of the world meeting and marrying a artist, or at least a young man with pretensions to being an artist.  The aunt approves of the match because she is beautiful and he is built along the strapping lines.  The young woman’s family does not approve and she is cut off.  They have a child, whereupon the man burns through his money trying to keep up with his wife’s lifestyle.  This burned me, mostly because I hate it when people live outside of their means.  The young woman comes across as dim and vain, which is guaranteed to earn my ire if it is not in a humorous vein a la Madeline Basset, Gussie Finknottle’s erstwhile love. 

There is only one person who comes through in the end, and that is the ex-boxer best friend of our leading man.  He is presented as perhaps not the sharpest of knives, but comes out with the most astute observations of the silly behavior that everyone indulges in.  Really, I could go on here, but it’s a waste of everyone’s time to review the plot.  While I realize that it is not the prime intention of literature to make you like the characters, they did not keep me riveted the way some anti-heroes can. 

The dust jacket warned me that this was Plum’s closest attempt at a serious novel.  I should have listened.  Perhaps he was too influenced by morality tales, or was trying out a gloomier post-WWI style so as to meld with the Lost Generation.  Whatever the reason, this will not go down in my annals as a Must Read. 

*Read March 2015.  Yes, I read two that month because I had to play catch-up from the previous autumn.

*She had a name.  I simply cannot be bothered to look it up because it means having to look at the book again.

Frozen Assets ~or~ Musing upon Viewing The Grand Budapest Hotel and Reading Wodehouse*

My husband and I recently passed an evening by sharing a much-needed bottle of red, eating pate, and watching the latest Wes Anderson offering, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”  Our little family had recently gone through a harrowing time from which we had emerged victorious, and our souls were deeply in need of soothing.  We could not have selected a better film to foot the bill.  Wes Anderson has been a favorite of mine for a while, although his last two films have really sealed the deal for me.**  There is something about his mannered, whimsical, melancholy style of storytelling that appeals to me on a primal level.  Regardless of where an Anderson film is set, be it in New York, India, or a fictitious Eastern European country named after a brand of vodka, there is always a similar feeling that for me is akin to plunging into a particularly delightful bath.

While I was reading Frozen Assets***, I discovered that the same could be said of Wodehouse.  Only a couple of characters have appeared before.  For the most part, we are greeted with a host of new people trying to cope with the muddle that is life.  Still, I could expect witty rejoinders from the smart, sane young man and hijinks from his rowdy friend.  This pattern dances all over the woks of Wodehouse.

Although the repetition might not appeal to all, I find it almost comforting, a panacea for life.  The years since I began this project in 2008 have been oddly action-packed.  This period has seen me experiencing my life’s highest highs and lowest lows (the same can, perhaps, be said for the banking industry as well).  Moreover, as I steadily progress into middle age, I am realizing that Change, far from being on occasional visitor, is my constant bedfellow.  While it is gratifying watching my contemporaries come into their own, it is painful to witness the decline of some of my older friends.  People who were a fixture at every gathering are now no longer with us.  Even though there are new, delightful people popping up, things will never be quite the way they were.  One wonders if they ever were that way to begin with.

So it is times like these that I see nothing wrong in plunging into Wodehouse.  Perhaps the glorious familiarity is an element of what made him so popular during his life.  The twentieth century was filled with nothing but Change (as the inhabitants remind us again and again).  His readers suffered two world wars, a massive economic depression, and those free-loving hippies.  Many people probably needed to dip into a world when the outside presented too many unpleasant surprises.  As I write this, I am sitting in a train that has been beleaguered by this historic winter, and I think that humanity will always need its little escapes into worlds that might never have really existed, but feel like they almost could. 

*Read March 2015

**I have similar feeling about Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Minghella.  A former inhabitant of this list was Woody Allen but, unfortunately, I am too conflicted about him.  I have similar feelings about Roman Polanski.

***Given that the world is engulfed by snow, I thought that this title would be appropriate.